


In Color

by Glare



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Major Character Injury, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-15 02:51:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8039590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glare/pseuds/Glare
Summary: Anakin Skywalker is six years old the first time he marks on his skin with intent. His classmates whisper to one another about soulmates on the jungle gym at recess or over toys during free time. They smear colorful paints on their skin and delight when, sometimes, there’s an answer. First graders do not understand the intricacies of the concept, but they know that soulmates are a good thing to have. Another person, who is a perfect match to you. What more could a lonely child want?





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I've had the first chapter of this piece laying around for a few weeks now, so I figure I'll post it, and continue if there's interest.
> 
> A modern ObiAniDala fill for that AU where whatever you mark on your skin also appears on your soulmate.

Anakin Skywalker is six years old the first time he marks on his skin with intent. His classmates whisper to one another about _soulmates_ on the jungle gym at recess or over toys during free time. They smear colorful paints on their skin and delight when, sometimes, there’s an answer. First graders do not understand the intricacies of the concept, but they know that soulmates are a good thing to have. Another person, who is a perfect match to you. What more could a lonely child want?

So, one free period, Anakin Skywalker takes a pack of colorful markers (the permanent kind, because it would be a shame for his masterpiece to be ruined before his soulmate gets the chance to see it), rolls up the right sleeve of his shirt, and sets to work.

The next morning, there is a response. He wakes to see that his left arm, from elbow to wrist, has been decorated by another’s hand. _Padme Amidala_ , _11_ , neat script reads, surrounded by a mural of hearts and flowers and things the young girls around his age typically draw. But that’s not all, of course. No soulmate of Anakin’s would be quite so boring. Curled around those small drawings, around her name, are two dragons with sharp teeth and long claws and powerful wings. One is labelled _Me_ , the other labelled _You_. The dragon-them breathe fire at a frowning stick figure labelled _Newt Gunray_. Anakin does not know who Newt Gunray is, but takes an immediate disliking to the boy on account of his soulmate’s obvious disdain. He giggles as he traces over the dragons, and runs to show his mother.

* * *

 

Qui-Gon Jinn has been teaching the first grade for more years than he would care to admit. He’s seen countless classes come and go, and with them countless young teachers-in-training seeking guidance in their path to a degree in early education. His current student-teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, is more promising than most—intelligent and kind, if a little anxious. He’s twenty-two, wonderful with the kids, and well on his way to becoming an excellent educator. Which is why Qui-Gon notices when something is amiss.

Anakin Skywalker bounds into class one morning with more energy than is usual for the active child. The source of his excitement is quickly revealed when he shucks off his jacket to display what lies beneath.

The boy’s forearms are colored in colorful drawings. The right is unmistakably Anakin’s handiwork, covered in robots and space ships and aliens in every color under the sun. _Anakin Skywalker, 6,_ is proclaimed in the boy’s untidy scrawl; the left is his soulmate’s response, and Qui-Gon can feel his lips curl into a fond smile. Children are always thrilled the first time they receive a response from a soulmate, and he’s pleased that the Fates have granted Anakin a partner who seems willing to match him in enthusiasm for the bond they share.

This, of course, is where things go wrong. Anakin rushes Obi-Wan next, eager to share the news, and the student-teacher flinches away from the child, snapping at him and storming away before either Anakin or Qui-Gon can process exactly what just happened. The child’s eyes glaze with tears, lip wobbling, and the teacher is quick to head off the oncoming tantrum, directing Anakin to a group of his friends who will undoubtedly be thrilled by the twin dragons that mark his skin.

They are, of course, and Obi-Wan’s rejection is quickly forgotten. When Qui-Gon gets the man alone, Obi-Wan claims that he’d just had a rough morning, and that it won’t happen again. Qui-Gon accepts this, and the day resumes as though the episode never happened.

It takes three days for the ink to fade from Anakin’s skin.

On the morning of the second, Anakin’s mother brings him to school and informs Qui-Gon that Obi-Wan’s behavior wasn’t quite as forgotten as he hoped it had been. Shmi Skywalker has heard nothing but kind words about the young man who helps Mr. Jinn, and had been quite alarmed when Anakin returned home and sullenly reported that Mr. Kenobi had been less than thrilled when her son tried to tell the man about his soulmate. Qui-Gon promises to speak to his student about it should the trend continue, and wishes her a good day when she leaves.

Obi-Wan, to Qui-Gon’s disappointment, is just as reluctant to interact with Anakin as he had been the previous day. He doesn’t acknowledge the boy beyond cursory greetings, and through the day goes out of his way to assist other students and force Qui-Gon to handle any questions Anakin may have. Skywalker’s repeated attempts at drawing Kenobi’s attention are rebuffed, and the child leaves at the end of the day looking quite morose. Shmi shoots him a sharp look as she ushers her son out the door, and Qui-Gon knows he has no choice but to confront Obi-Wan about his behavior.

“What has gotten into you?” He snarls, when the children are all gone and it’s finally just them.

“What are you talking about?” Obi-Wan asks, feigning ignorance as he organizes papers for their lesson tomorrow at his small desk. “I’m fine.”

“No you aren’t,” the teacher asserts, stomping across the room to his student’s side. “This is the second day in a row that you have blatantly ignored the needs of one of your students. This isn’t like you, Obi-Wan.”

Kenobi goes for aloof, but there is a wobble in his voice that betrays him. “And which student am I supposedly neglecting?”

“Anakin Skywalker.”

Even mention of the boy’s name makes Obi-Wan flinch, face paling with distress.

“Please, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon pleads, “just talk to me. We can figure this out, whatever it is.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t meet his eyes when he reaches for the hem of his pale sweater, tugging it over his head and letting it drop to the floor. Next is the collared shirt, whose cuffs are unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbows, revealing white medical gauze wrapped around the man’s forearms. Qui-Gon feels his stomach sinking as Obi-Wan picks at the tape holding down the gauze on his left arm, knowing without knowing just what lies beneath.

By the time his left arms is revealed and Obi-Wan has moved on to the right, Qui-Gon can feel his heart breaking. He watches his student pull the gauze loose, revealing the colorful, chaotic drawings of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala, face flushed with shame, until there is nothing left hidden.

“I don’t—” Kenobi stutters, “I didn’t—”

And then Qui-Gon is drawing the younger man to him, wrapping his arms around heaving shoulders and allowing Kenobi to fist the lapels of his coat as the man soaks the neck of Qui-Gon’s shirt with tears. The skin of Obi-Wan’s arms is marred with children’s art, the oldest of whom is half the man’s age, and they both know what happens next.

Qui-Gon isn’t sure what to tell his students when they ask after Mr. Kenobi’s sudden absence from the classroom. He watches Anakin stare despondently at Obi-Wan’s cleared desk, and remember his earlier thoughts about the boy’s soulmate. He’s changed his mind, now. Fate, he decides, can be a cruel thing.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is twenty-two, and on the third day, he watches his future as an educator washed away with the last of the ink staining Anakin Skywalker’s skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan suffers no matter what universe he's in.  
> 


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the love, kids! I actually didn't expect such a positive response from this fic. Glad you liked the premise!  
> Without further ado, chapter 2!

Obi-Wan stands on a makeshift stage near the back of the packed bookstore. Before him, a crowd of people mill, their ages ranging from early teens to late adulthood. Some bear the marks of soulmates, their skin decorated with colorful ink, while in others it is notably absent. The former are here because they like the stories, eager to meet the author who never fails to entertain them. The latter look at him with starry eyes, like Obi-Wan is a hero that’s walked straight out of a comic book. He is everything they aspire to be, and his stories give them hope for a future that society has told them they may never receive.

This is not the first time he’s stood before these people. There was the press tour when his first book took off, then when his second was released, then his third. Now, he’s published his fourth, and a part of him still feels guilt when they thank him—when they shake the hand of Rako Hardeen, his pen name, and tell him of how much he inspires them. He is not who these people believe him to be; the truth of him is hidden away beneath layers of medical gauze and the long sleeves he never goes without.

“Did you always want to be an author?” A pimply-faced boy near the front of the group asks. He has bracelets of ink around the skin of his wrists.

“No,” Obi-Wan admits, “I wanted to go into education, originally. It didn’t work out, obviously, though I can’t complain. If I had become a teacher, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Mr. Hardeen!” A woman at the back calls. Her copy of his latest book, is in her arms, spine already bent and pages dog-eared. She is undoubtedly one of the Unmarked, whose skin is clear of Fate’s intervention. They are met with distrust and skepticism by most of society, but Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan envies them. “What made you decide to write non-traditional romance?”

It’s one of the more popular questions he gets during the press tours. At first, they’d tried personal questions, but the look on Obi-Wan’s face the first time somebody asked him about whether or not he had a soulmate had wiped any further discussion of that subject off the table. He knows they all think that he lost his soulmate in some tragic accident, he is on occasion vain enough to explore the various forums dedicated to his work, and he doesn’t correct them. The rumors keep these Q&A sessions focused on the books and not him. Rako Hardeen is thoughtful and sympathetic toward the plights of those seen as lesser by society; Obi-Wan Kenobi is bitter man, jealous of what they don’t have. Rako Hardeen will shake their hands with his enigmatic smile and encourage them on their quests; Obi-Wan Kenobi will go back to his hotel room and drink himself stupid until his editor, Satine, drags his ass from bed and forces him back out into the spotlight to play Rako Hardeen once more.

“In this day in age, the media is saturated with stories of the typical Soulmate romance. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that, but that isn’t everyone’s story. Countless people will never have that moment when their skin is stained by another’s hand, whether it be because they’re Unmarked or because their Soulmate is beyond their reach. I wanted to write something for them—something to remind them that the love they find is just as valid as any other. There is someone out there for everyone, and finding them may be messy. You may not have a roadmap to follow, but if anything, doesn’t that make the journey all the more worthwhile?”

Applause follows, it always does, and Satine takes advantage of the break in questions to draw the session to a close. The crowd scrambles to form a line for the book signing, and the next hour passes in a flurry of soft words, scribbled pens, and papercuts. The thanks are many, and make him feel as terrible for his deception as they always do. He keeps smiling, though, keeps shaking hands, keeps encouraging them to follow their heart.

And then a young woman drops her copy on the table before him. She’s in her late teens or early adulthood, with wavy brown hair and intelligent, dark eyes. She offers a hand and Obi-Wan takes it, bringing it to his lips in a gesture that never fails to make people he encounters on these tours giggle, from the youngest toddlers to the middle-aged patrons. She is no exception, and her laugh is lovely. There is no ring on her finger; she’s going to make someone very happy, one day.

“And who should I make this out to?” Obi-Wan asks, flipping open the cover and picking up his pen.

“Padme Amidala, please,” she replies, and Obi-Wan feels his heart stumble over the next beat.

His breath catches, and he forces his face back into his usual smile as he tells her, “A beautiful name.”

He signs the page quickly, practically slamming it closed afterwards and handing it back, already making to wave the next patron forward. He doesn’t see her flip the book back open as she walks off, doesn’t see her brow furrow and she looks between his signature and the author’s name printed on the cover.

He doesn’t realize that he’s signed the page _Obi-Wan Kenobi_.

* * *

 

Padme finds him later, out back of the store. He’s taking deep drags of a cigarette, hoping to wait out the last lingering handful of Rako Hardeen’s loyal fans, when he hears her call him.

“Mr. Hardeen?”

Obi-Wan has never hated Satine Kryze more than he has in this moment. His too-nosy editor must have sent the girl after him when she introduced herself. In hindsight, he never should have shared the plight of his two young soulmates to the woman. “You’re… Padme, right?” He asks, faking ignorance.

She grins, obviously pleased he remembered. “Yes. Ms. Kryze told me I could find you out here. I had wanted to ty and talk to you after the signing, but you disappeared so quickly…”

Her gaze flickers between his face and the cigarette in his hand, and Obi-Wan begrudgingly drops it, grinding it out with the toe of a shoe he’d never be able to afford if he’d stayed in education.

“Sorry,” he sighs, and doesn’t mean it, “nasty habit.”

She’s nineteen, he now knows, having done the math in head while he smoked. Anakin is fourteen. He hasn’t thought about them in a while as anything more than an abstract concept—his too-young Soulmates who managed to ruin his life. Of course they would have grown in these eight years. It seems foolish for something like that to surprise him, but it does. Obi-Wan is thirty, Padme is here before him, smiling at him, extending her hand again in the space between them. He doesn’t kiss it this time, the gesture seemingly too intimate now that he knows who she is. If she’s put out by the formality of the handshake, she hides it very well.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I wanted to thank you, actually,” she answers. “I know you probably get thanked all the time by your fans, but I wanted to tell you myself. I think what you do, writing about love outside the tradition of soulmates, is wonderful. There are so many people who are told their whole lives that they’re broken, or unwanted, because they weren’t born connected to someone else. Your work gives them hope for a better future.”

“Are you Unmarked?” Obi-Wan asks despite knowing the answer, because the question is expected.

“Oh! No,” Padme says with that same melodic giggle from earlier. “No. I have a partner. But I was friends with a boy in high school, Bail, who was. Bail spent most of our junior and senior year pining over our classmate, Breha. Her soulmate had been killed in an accident our freshman year, and no matter what I told him, Bail wouldn’t confess his feelings for her. He’d heard so much in the media about how a soulmate would never fall for another and would pine for their lost love forever that he just wrote it off as a lost cause. I ended up lending him your first book, and I think it was a big part of what finally convinced him to say something to Breha toward the end of our senior year. They’re together now, and really happy, and I owe some of that to you. So, thank you.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to say to that, and before he gets the chance, Padme leans up on her toes and pecks him on the cheek. Lost for words, he watches her turn bright scarlet and flee with a choked, “Goodbye, Mr. Hardeen.”

Padme Amidala is nineteen, and beautiful, and kind; Obi-Wan is definitely getting drunk tonight.

* * *

 

Maybe it’s because he’s drunk that he unpeels the gauze that covers his arms. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk that he really takes a moment to study the marks that cover his skin. He’s seen them, yes, when he showered and changed or fell into bed with some random person he picked up at the bar. He noticed them, saw them, but never studied them. The marks weren’t important; he hated them. Tonight, though, Obi-Wan holds a bottle in one hand and traces the designs with his free one.

They aren’t as colorful as they used to be. Anakin and Padme have settled with age, sticking to single colors almost all the time, now. Padme’s marks are made with blue ink—or sometimes purple, when she’s leaving notes to herself. Anakin’s are always black.

Today, the boy has written mathematical formulas on the inside of his wrist, likely for a test. Obi-Wan remembers his classmates employing similar tactics, in his youth. There is one formula, he notes, that is wrong. Anakin has swapped a few of the variables, making the equation practically useless. He’s going to get those questions wrong if he tries to use that mess of a formula.

Maybe it’s because he’s drunk that he stumbles to the hotel room’s small desk and picks up one of his red editing pens. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk that he scribbles out the incorrect formula and writes a corrected version above it. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk that he adds, ‘ _Good luck!’_ to the space below it. He manages to stop himself from adding a ridiculous smiley face to the end of that, but only just.

Obi-Wan doesn’t know if his corrections will have reached Anakin in time. He doesn’t know where the boy is, now, but he sets his drink on the bedside table and flops down over the bed, running fingers over the first mark he’s ever made and remembering the floppy-haired child he taught for six months so many years ago. Seeing the red amongst the black and the blue pulls some nameless weight from his chest.

Maybe it’s because he’s drunk. Maybe it’s because he met Padme Amidala today, and she was beautiful and kind. Maybe he’s tired of pretending that these people who cover him in their marks mean nothing to him.

* * *

 

The first thing Padme does when she arrives back at her dorm is flop into the seat of her desk, turn on her laptop, and type the name Hardeen signed on the inside of his book into google. Dorme is hovering over her own desk, nose buried in her law textbook, and doesn’t acknowledge her roommate’s entry. Padme is glad, as the inquisitive woman would have likely picked up on the other’s distress and forced her friend to recount her humiliating experience in the alleyway.

Several entries pop up with a search of _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ , the first of which being a disused social media profile. She browses through its contents, mostly teaching-related quotes and messages from friends about meeting up places. There are pictures of a young man with short, reddish-brown hair. She can see Hardeen in the color of his eyes, in the shape of his jaw. The more recent posts, however, make her cringe and understand why Kenobi abandoned the account. There are insults and accusations from strangers to make even the most spirited politician cry. She’s quick to back out of the page, both eager and not to find out what had earned such a seemingly pleasant man such ire.

The second link is to a news article, nearly eight years old. It tells the story of Student Teacher Obi-Wan Kenobi of Tattooine Elementary, who was discovered to have been Soulmates with one of his first grade students. It was a scandal, leading to Kenobi’s likely forced resignation and prompt dismissal from the university’s education program. According to the article, precisely which child Kenobi had been Soulmates with was never revealed, though several parents attempted to bring him up on abuse charges in the following weeks. With no solid evidence combined with testimony from other parents and several coworkers, he was acquitted in the end. Kenobi apparently disappeared off the map after that.

Padme Amidala knows what became of him. A slip of his hand, and Rako Hardeen, beloved author, revealed himself to be the ostracized Obi-Wan Kenobi. Padme considers the picture included in the article, which features Kenobi pushing his way through the thick crowd outside a courthouse. He has a black eye, and he’s wearing an expression that says he’d like nothing more than to crawl into the inside of a bottle and stay there for the rest of his natural life. She remembers his fake smile as he snuffed out his cigarette in the alleyway. ‘ _That isn’t everyone’s story’_ , he’d said to the crowd at the bookstore earlier, and Padme hadn’t understood why he’d looked so sad when he’d said it.

She knows now.

* * *

 

Anakin is in the middle of his test, chewing on his pencil and scowling down at the numbers that refuse to line up. He’d blown through the rest of the questions already, but this small section has had him stumped and the class period is nearing its end. He glances at his wrist, at the formula written there, and then back at the paper. It should be fine, he used the equation he had written down, so why does he feel like something is wrong?

His gaze flickers back to his wrist, and is startled to see that something has changed. Where his formula once lay is now obscured by a mess of red ink. Instead, a new formula is written above it, similar but not identical to Anakin’s own. ‘ _Good luck!’_ someone has added nearby in that same neat handwriting and red ink. He stares at it, and blinks, and stares some more. The red marks remain.

It’s not Padme. Even if Anakin didn’t know that Padme’s handwriting is all elegant curls and blue ink, he did know that Padme’s told him that she won’t help him cheat. She’s told him that he has to work his way through school fair and square, which means cheating on his own. So this definitely not her.

Anakin isn’t precisely sure what to think about that, but the teacher calls a five minute warning and he isn’t given time to ponder the dilemma any further. Instead, he hastily erases his work and plugs numbers into the corrected formula. The answers he gets this time make a lot more sense, and he’s confident when he hands the test in.

Later, on the bus ride home, he pays no mind to the noisy students who ride with him. He runs his fingers over the red ink and asks softly, to no one in particular, “Who are you?”

At home, he uncaps a black pen and writes _thank you :)_ beside the red, hoping that this isn’t the last time their mysterious third party makes contact.


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ages for this chapter:  
> Obi-Wan: 32  
> Padme: 21  
> Anakin: 16

Their third is good at English. Yeah, he’s good at math, and science, and history, too, but he’s best at English. These days, Anakin’s arms are covered in the man’s signature red pen by the time he turns in for the night. Even Padme sometimes scribbles down bits and pieces of essays she’s trying to write and struggling with for him to correct, even though she’s previously claimed that she’s independent enough to not need any help. He doesn’t talk much, outside of assisting them with their schoolwork. Sometimes, late at night or very early in the morning, there will be absentminded doodles of geometrical patterns on the backs of Anakin’s hands, but he, whoever he is, is fastidious in keeping their skin clean and usually scrubs his marks away at the start of every day.

Padme is certain their third is a man. She isn’t sure why, but she will not be persuaded otherwise. It doesn’t bother Anakin; he’s never been particularly picky about gender, and if fate says he’s supposed to end up with a guy then hey, who’s he to argue? Their third has to be around their age, if not older, judging by how good he seems to be at everything. They’d discussed him the last time Anakin called her. It’s not like they can have conversations about him where the man can see, after all, and with Anakin moving to Coruscant in a month, they’ve been taking an active interest in knowing each other better. Yeah, they knew each other before, but actually hearing Padme’s melodic laugh is so different than reading her notes and trying to imagine what she might sound like.

He’s sprawled out on his bed, phone pressed to his ear, languishing in the comfortable silence between them, when Padme asks it.

“Hey, Ani?” She sounds hesitant—uncharacteristically so. “You went to Tattooine Elementary, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you… where you there when a man named Obi-Wan Kenobi was there? He would have been teaching the first grade?”

Anakin’s blood freezes in his veins as memories he hasn’t thought about in years rush abruptly back. Of Mr. Jinn and Mr. Kenobi. Of falling off the swingset and Kenobi helping him up, dusting him off, and sending him on his way. Of Mr. Kenobi smiling patiently down at him as he tripped over a large word in a reading exercise. Of Mr. Kenobi snarling at him, ignoring him, suddenly acting like Anakin wasn’t worth any more than the ground under his feet.

“Yeah,” he chokes. “I was… I was in his class. Why do you want to know?”

“So you know how I went to that book signing last year? The one I told you about?”

“That Hardeen guy, right?”

“Yes. Anyways, I don’t know if he was just distracted, or what happened, but when I stepped away, I noticed that he’d signed my book as Obi-Wan Kenobi instead of Rako Hardeen. I was wondering if you could tell me anything about him? That you remember? I’ve been looking into him, and I know what the internet says, but I wanted to know if this was what he was actually like, or if people are just blowing thing out of proportion…”

Anakin can feel his teeth grinding together, and it suddenly feels like somebody lit a fire under his skin. Of course. Of fucking course that bastard would be living the dream right now, after everything that happened. “What do you want me to say, Padme?” He growls. “That he was a saint? That he was always a star? Yeah, he was a good teacher, until he fucking abandoned us!”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, followed by a confused, “I’m sorry?”

Anakin barks a harsh laugh, pushing off from his bed and pacing his small room in long strides. “Yeah! One day he’s there, helping out, and the next he’s just gone! Didn’t say a word to us. Just took off, like he suddenly decided he was too good for teaching or something. Fucking prick,” Anakin snarls. “Glad to hear he’s living the good life now, though. Maybe if all his adoring fans knew what he was really like, they’d think twice before they worshipped the ground he walked on.”

Padme’s silence continues, and her voice when she speaks again is pitying. Why the fuck is she pitying him? “They never told you, did they?”

“Never told me what?”

“Ani, have you tried to look into Obi-Wan since he left your school? Like, at all?”

“No. Why would I? He obviously didn’t want anything to do with us, or he wouldn’t have just walked out.”

“He didn’t walk out, Ani! He was _forced_ to leave.”

Everything in Anakin’s brain grinds to a screeching halt at those words. Nearly ten years of assumptions suddenly unstable. Questioned. “What?”

“I can’t believe they didn’t tell you!” Padme shrieks. “The school board found out that Obi-Wan’s soulmate was one of his students. They kicked him out of the program and took him to court and everything. A lot of parents testified that he hadn’t done anything, so they didn’t charge him with anything, but his life was basically ruined.”

“Oh,” Anakin says weakly. What else can he say? “Did… did they ever… I mean…”

“Ever release which kid it was?” Padme guesses. Anakin nods, even though he knows she can’t see it. “No. I figured the parents wanted it kept under wraps. You know how kids can be about soulmates.”

Yeah, Anakin knows. At that age, once he’d found out about Padme, that was all he thought about. He’d spent hours drawing on his arms, chattering with his mother, writing a million questions for the older girl to answer. His classmates were the same; once they’d known someone was fated to them, they wanted to be a part of their life. More than half of his first grade class had fallen into puppy-love with Kenobi by the time he’d left; if they’d found out their partner was Mr. Kenobi, removing him from their life would have been impossible. Anakin isn’t even the man’s soulmate, but six year-old him had been devastated when he and vanished between one day and the next.

“Why are you bringing this up now, Padme?” He asks. “I mean, I know you said you were looking into him, but it’s been over a year since that book signing. You could have asked me then. What’s the deal?”

“I guess I just never really put the pieces together,” she sighs, and Anakin can hear the scratching of a pen over the line. He can imagine her sitting in her little dorm room, leaning over a desk, working on whatever assignment she’s got due next for her political science degree. “I mean, I knew you grew up in Tattooine, but it never really connected that you might have known him. And then I completely forgot about it until a couple days ago, when I saw a trailer for the adaptation they’re making of one of his books. Apparently he’s supposed to be coming to Coruscant for the big premiere, but I wasn’t sure if… would you like to go, Ani? If I got us tickets, would you go with me? It’s still a few months away, and you’ll already be in Coruscant. It could give you a chance to talk to him about what happened.”

Anakin scoffs. “As if he’d even remember me.”

“Trust me, Ani,” Padme assures, “he remembers you. You’re very difficult to forget.”

__

The theater is crowded that night; nothing less was expected. Men and women mill about the lobby, garbed in fine dresses and suits that stand at odds with the cloying smell of popcorn that hangs in the air and the musical jingles of arcade games. They’ve come for him, he knows. They’ve come just to claim proximity—to grovel at his feet for the fleeting chance to touch greatness. They talk loudly over one another to be heard, but listen to no one and manage to say nothing at all. Press clamor for a headline, or a soundbite, and Obi-Wan leaves them for Satine, who can spin words like a web just as well as he. He doesn’t care about them. No, instead, his eyes track two figures as though they are the only ones in the room—like a drowning man drawing his first blessed breaths.

Padme Amidala circles the room like a queen; like a goddess who’s deigned to come down and mingle amongst the mortals. Her dress is a simple white affair, but she wears it with a pride that sets her apart from the women in their gaudy haute couture. She is radiant, her brown hair spilling, loosely curled, over her shoulders and down the expanse of her bared back. A small smile curls her lips when the boy on her arm leans over to whisper something in her ear, a mischievous smirk on his face that Obi-Wan can still recognize even after ten years of separation.

He has not seen Anakin Skywalker since the boy was six years old, and the transformation from then to now is striking. Gone is the padding of baby fat, leaving Skywalker lean and tall. The over-long hair he’d worn as a boy has since been shorn short and darkened with age, a dusty blonde where it had once been golden. It sticks out in disarray despite Anakin’s obvious attempts to tame it, and Obi-Wan’s hands twitch with the alien desire to run his fingers through it. Anakin’s tux is secondhand, his shoes scuffed, but he too walks as though he owns the room. He is as confident in this as he is when he scrawls declarations of affection upon their skin.

And Obi-Wan has always been a weak man.

They’re watching him, he knows, just as intensely as he’s watching them. He can feel their eyes on him, though his own slip away every time they try to meet his gaze. Their hands are intertwined, hanging loosely between them. On the back of their palms, the date and time of the event are written; it’d taken layers upon layers of Satine’s concealer to hide it. As they move through the room, slowly weaving their way closer, Obi-Wan finds himself tensing, but with what he isn’t sure. Exhilaration? Anticipation? Dread? Or some heady combination of all three?

Have they finally figured him out?

With a kiss to Padme’s cheek, Anakin breaks away, ceasing their circuitous route in favor of a more direct approach. Obi-Wan takes a breath and forces himself to relax. To these people, he’s just Rako Hardeen, novelist. They won’t confront him about the red ink he can see peeking out from below the sleeves of Anakin’s coat. No, this is about something else.

Anakin’s steps falter the closer he gets, confidence draining from his posture and rounding his shoulders. He stops just outside Obi-Wan’s most inner circle, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot as though attempting to work up the nerve to continue.

The uncharacteristic shyness has Obi-Wan taking pity, finally catching Anakin’s eye and waving him over with Rako Hardeen’s patent smile. He’s perfectly aware that he modeled this particular grin after the one he used to give his students, and it has the intended effect. Anakin’s eyes light up with recognition, and his previous pace returns. He still fiddles anxiously with the hem of his sleeves, but that could be expected after years apart following an abrupt separation. Obi-Wan’s security attempts to step between the boy and him when Anakin gets too close for their comfort, and he’s quick to send them off. Instead, they arrange themselves into a convenient privacy screen, separating the pair from the numerous nosy journalists in attendance.

“Hello,” Obi-Wan greets when Anakin finally stands before him, pleasant tone masking the thundering of his heart.

Anakin flushes. “H-Hello… I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Anakin Skywalker. I was in Mr. Jinn’s first grade class when you were teaching at Tattooine Elementary.”

Obi-Wan blinks. “Oh.” He doesn’t have to feign surprise—not with Anakin’s identity, but that the boy recognized him. He’s gone to painstaking lengths to keep his true identity a secret; the only person here who knows it is Satine. This is an anomaly. “You’ve grown.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, but he can’t think of anything else. Anakin ducks his head in a shy gesture, giggling softly. “I was wondering if you were going to be in town for a few days? If you’d like to get coffee or something?” The teen asks when he regains his composure. “I know we really didn’t know each other for very long, but I’d like to talk to you about some things, if you’d be willing. My partner, Padme, and my therapist seem to think it’d be good for me…”

Obi-Wan knows that he should say no. Not just because he’s supposed to be on the road first thing in the morning. There’s also the pesky matter of the restraining order that Shmi Skywalker had discreetly filed when the school board approached her about his and Anakin’s… condition. Until the boy turns eighteen, Obi-Wan technically isn’t supposed to get within a hundred yards of him. Anakin’s presence here tonight leads him to believe that Shmi never told him about that particular bit of legal action, or simply doesn’t know that Anakin is here. Even this is pushing his luck, really.

“It’s fine if you can’t,” Anakin rambles on, Obi-Wan’s hesitation draining him of his recently regained confidence. “I know you’re a famous author and all now, and you’re busy, and this is totally out of the blue—”

“Anakin, I’d love to get coffee,” Obi-Wan says, and immediately considers the social ramifications of punching himself in the face in front of all this media.

The boy’s face lights up with a wide grin. “Oh! Great! Here, let me give you my number…”

Obi-Wan can’t well tell the boy that he already has Anakin’s cell number from when he exchanged it with Padme, so he makes to reach for the small notebook in his inside breast pocket when Anakin pulls a pen from his own coat. His hand doesn’t make it that far, though, Anakin catching hold and dragging it over to him, clearly intending scrawl the number on the back of Obi-Wan’s palm.

 A flash of panic races through him, and he wrenches himself from Anakin’s grip before the pen can make contact with his skin. The boy freezes in place, hurt and confusion crashing over his features as Obi-Wan cradles the offending hand to his chest as though Anakin’s very touch has burned it. There is an awkward silence between them as they process what has just happened and try to pull themselves back together.

“Sorry,” the younger man sputters, shock giving way to shame as Obi-Wan fumbles again for the notebook. “I shouldn’t have—Of course that would be a sore subject—”

“It’s fine,” Obi-Wan says and he shoves the notebook into Anakin’s free hand. “I just didn’t expect—”

Anakin scribbles the number down, and passes the small book back. Obi-Wan pockets it, and they continue to stare warily at one another as they attempt to ascertain where they stand, now.

“Thank you for the invitation, Anakin,” Obi-Wan finally says. “I will text you in the morning to work out a meeting time.”

“Of course,” Anakin says, and promptly flees.

In Obi-Wan’s opinion, this meeting could have gone a lot worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anakin and Padme aren't an ~official~ couple yet due to Anakin's age, but Anakin still uses the term "Partner" when referring to her because she basically is. Even though they aren't together now, they both know they will be in the future, and it's easier than trying to come up with another term or simply deny their connection altogether.
> 
> Also, with Obi-Wan and Anakin going on a kind of coffee date next chapter, I should let you know that I don't write underage and nothing's going to happen between anybody until Anakin is legal. If that was a concern.


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a startling turn of events--  
> Wait, nope. This chapter is just more angst.

“What did you really want to talk about, Anakin?” Obi-Wan finally asks when they’ve run out of other subjects to discuss. “I know you didn’t invite me here to question me about my work.”

From Obi-Wan’s career to Anakin schooling to how he’s adapting to the move to Coruscant, they’ve spent the better part of two hours discussing menial things as they carefully skirt the subject they both know brought them there in the first place. The café is warm and comfortable, busy enough to grant them anonymity but quiet enough for their conversation to flow unimpeded by background noise. Anakin is nursing his second cup of coffee, and Obi-Wan his third cup of tea. The teen had been mortified when Kenobi confessed that he actually dislikes coffee, but Obi-Wan was quick to reassure him that he wasn’t going to let such a small detail keep him from talking with Anakin, and that most coffee houses serve tea as well.

Anakin chews on his bottom lip for a moment, turning the question over in his head as he considers how to best say what he wants to. Obi-Wan is looking at him with an open expression, calm and collected for all that Anakin is not. “I wanted to apologize,” he spits out, taking the plunge and continuing before Obi-Wan has the chance to say anything further. “After you left, I was really angry with you. I didn’t know about everything that happened, but I really looked up to you when I was younger and then one day you just up and left without saying anything to us. I thought… well, I don’t know what I thought, but it hurt. I never bothered to look into everything, and just carried that hurt around until I hated you, and I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

Obi-Wan sighs, letting go of his cup of tea to reach over and cover one of Anakin’s hands with his own. “It’s alright, Anakin,” the older man murmurs. “You have nothing to be forgiven for. It’s like you said: you were so young, you couldn’t have understood. Everyone could have handled the situation better than we did, I think, but I am grateful you came to me to talk about this.”

Turning his hand over under Kenobi’s, he carefully curls his fingers around Obi-Wan’s and squeezes the older man’s palm gently. Obi-Wan offers him a soft smile in return—genuine, instead of those manufactured grins he gives the press. “You know,” Anakin decides, “I think I’m glad you weren’t my teacher all year.”

“And why is that?” Kenobi asks.

“Because if you were, we might not have gotten the chance to meet like this again.”

Obi-Wan studies him for a long moment, and Anakin can see the man working something out behind his eyes. His thumb rubs absently at the back of Anakin’s palm, and there’s something in the touch, in the intensity of Obi-Wan’s scrutiny, that make’s Anakin’s heart skip a beat. Eventually the man must come to a decision, because he ducks his head, a faint blush and a sheepish smile on his face. He lets go of Anakin’s hand, much to the teenager’s disappointment, and reaches for the sleeve of his shirt with it. “You know, Anakin, I—”

He glances up over Anakin’s shoulder, that ridiculous grin on his face, just as the bell above the door rings. His movements still immediately, the smile dropping away. His skin pales, expression replaced by one of horror, and Anakin turns around in his seat to see just who had ruined their moment and put that expression on Obi-Wan’s face.

His mother, Shmi Skywalker, stands just inside the door. Red-faced, nostrils flaring, the glare she is giving Obi-Wan Kenobi could probably kill lesser men. Anakin has never seen the woman so angry in his life, and has no idea what could have caused it. He’d told her he was going out for coffee with an old teacher. Surely she can’t have a problem with Obi-Wan, right?

He is, apparently, wrong. Shmi stalks across the crowded café with all the grace of a predator. Obi-Wan scrambles to his feet, immediately putting distance between himself and Anakin, and Anakin has never seen anyone as terrified of his mother as Obi-Wan Kenobi seems to be in this moment. Not _Anakin’s_ mother—not sweet, gentle Shmi Skywalker who’s always been happy to host his friends and holds him at night when he has night terrors and works so hard so that she might be able to put him through college when the time comes. Shmi Skywalker who—

_Smack!_

Obi-Wan stumbles with the force of the blow, the noise drawing the attention of the café’s other patrons. Already there is a handprint blooming across Kenobi’s cheek, and the man looks nothing but remorseful about the whole situation.

Shmi Skywalker, who has apparently just slapped former teacher and renowned author Obi-Wan Kenobi across the face.

“You,” she snarls, poking a finger into Kenobi’s chest, as though to clarify that it is _him_ she’s talking to, “have some explaining to do. Outside. _Now_.”

Kenobi flees the café with the swiftness of a kicked dog, but Anakin can see him hovering just outside the door, waiting on Shmi.

“And you,” she rounds on him, tone brokering no argument, “stay right here until I get back.”

Anakin ducks his head, cheeks burning with shame even though he has no idea what he’s done wrong. He’d told her he was going out, so that couldn’t be it. The only reasonable explanation is that he’s out with Kenobi, and that doesn’t make any sense at all. Shmi isn’t one to buy in on rumor, and she knows how good Obi-Wan was with him when Anakin was the man’s student. Surely she doesn’t believe all those things the other parents said about Obi-Wan? He never laid a hand on Anakin!

Anakin tries to remain at the table. He really does. It’s difficult, though, when his mother and Obi-Wan have wandered out of his line of sight, likely into the alley beside the building to having their conversation uninterrupted. On top of that, he can feel the heavy gazes of the other patrons as they stare at him, silently judging. They have no idea what’s happening—hell, _Anakin_ has no idea what’s happening—but they stare at him like a zoo animal and it’s more than he can take.

Pushing away from the table, he digs a few dollars out of his wallet and leaves them in apology for the scene they caused before slinking out of the café. He follows the sounds of raised voices to the alleyway, growing more distinct the close he gets, but doesn’t dare try to join the pair. Instead, he leans against the wall, poking his head around the corner just enough to see what’s going on and hear what’s being said.

“I honestly didn’t think you were this stupid, Obi-Wan!” Shmi snarls, up in the younger man’s face, aggressive in a way Anakin has never seen before.

Obi-Wan cowers. “I’m so sorry, Shmi. I just wanted… Anakin asked me if I wanted to have coffee. I didn’t want to disappoint him.”

“It’s your job to disappoint him! You are the adult here! You are responsible for making the right decisions when he is incapable of making them himself!”

“Maybe he would be able to make his own decisions if you would just tell him—”

“Anakin doesn’t need to know anything! He’s going off to college soon; he doesn’t need it hanging over his head when there are so many choices he’s already going to have to make.”

“He’s going to find out eventually, Shmi, and if he thinks that you hid this from him, that _we_ hid this from him—”

“Don’t give me that crap, Kenobi,” Shmi growls. “You don’t know my son. You can’t tell me what _he_ is going to think—”

“Exactly!” Obi-Wan snaps, finally past his breaking point. He reaches for his sleeve the way he had back in the café before Shmi barged in. “I don’t know your son! I’ve spent the last ten years keeping my distance—” The man rolls up his sleeves agitatedly as he talks, peeling back the bandages to reveal red and blue and black ink. Anakin can’t make out the individual words, but he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to, because he knows already—because those marks are mirrored on his own skin. “—but whether you like it or not Shmi, _this_ isn’t going to go away. Gods above forgive me for wanting to spend a few hours getting to know the man I’m supposed to be giving the rest of my life to. I think I have that right!”

“Well, you don’t have the right, Kenobi! The courts took that right away from you ten years ago, when I filed the restraining order you are in blatant violation of. You’re damn lucky I didn’t just call the police when I found out who Anakin was with—”

Anakin doesn’t hear how that conversation ends. He doesn’t want to hear; he’s heard plenty as it is. Their words ring in his ears as he stumbles toward the bike rack, his hands shake as he fumbles with the chain on his bike, the images of Obi-Wan’s arms covered in Anakin’s and Padme’s handwriting linger behind his eyes. It all swirls around in his mind as he clambers onto his bike and kicks off, allowing muscle memory to guide him as he speeds away. It’s a long trip to Padme’s dorm from the café, but Anakin’s going to make it anyways. He knows he should go home, he knows he should talk to his mom about all of this, but he can’t do it right now. If he tries, he’ll get angry, and they won’t get any talking done at all. He needs to cool down; he needs to talk to Padme.

It started raining sometime between the café and the dorm, but Anakin doesn’t realize it until he’s shivering in Padme’s doorway. He must look like shit, because she forgoes the usual pleasantries in favor of ushering him into the room and then straight into the bathroom, lest he drip on Dorme’s carpet. She wraps a towel around his shoulders to ward off the chill of the room, then takes a seconds towel to his dripping hair. The touch is soothing, and Anakin finds himself slumping against her as she scrubs him dry. Anakin would be embarrassed by his dependence if not for the afternoon he just had. Life-altering revelation is surely a passable excuse as to why he finds himself incapable of doing more than letting his soulmate—one of them, because the other is fucking _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ —strip him down to his boxers and redress him in a pair of pants he left the last time he came over.

Padme informs him that Dorme is out staying with her girlfriend, Sabe, for the weekend, for which Anakin is grateful; he isn’t sure he could have such an important conversation with someone eavesdropping on them the whole time. And boy, do they have a lot to talk about.

* * *

 

Obi-Wan doesn’t return to the hotel until later that evening. It takes Satine all of one look at him to know that his coffee date with Anakin had gone to shit. The woman doesn’t even bother to ask how he managed to get piss drunk in a city that doesn’t sell alcohol on Sundays; they both know he has an inborn gift for locating a fix when he needs one. Instead, she guides him into the bathroom, bending him over the toilet when he inevitably vomits up everything he’s put down in the last few hours. For all the drinking Obi-Wan does, he’s never been particularly good at keeping it down, especially with additional stress added to the mix. The pack of cigarettes he smoked earlier probably didn’t help, either.

“That bad, huh?” She asks, rubbing his spine soothingly before moving away and rattling around in the cabinets.

He knows exactly what she’s doing: collecting his pills, his razors, anything he might be able to use to hurt himself. She trusts Obi-Wan won’t get creative, as drunk as he is, and will give everything back when he’s sober again. It’s an old song and dance that started just after he published his first novel, at the beginning of their partnership, when newfound success had caused the anniversary of his university expulsion to hit him harder than usual. Needless to say, Satine is not interested in a repeat performance.

He doesn’t answer her, but accepts a small paper cup of water to rinse his mouth out with. The taste still lingers, but he doesn’t have the energy to bother with brushing his teeth. Instead he lets himself be herded, rumpled clothes and all, back into the main room and subsequently into bed. Obi-Wan can feel the weight of alcohol-induced exhaustion pressing down on him, further aided when Satine tucks the comforter up to his chin.

“You’re pathetic, Kenobi…” he hears her mutter as she climbs into the bed beside him, flicking on the television. She’ll stay the night to make sure nothing goes wrong, and he’ll receive a thorough lashing for the episode in the morning—such is the way of this routine. He doesn’t have a retort for her, considering he is feeling quite pathetic right about now, so instead he lets the low murmur of whatever terrible reality show Satine’s watching to lull him to sleep.

* * *

 

A sharp rap at the hotel door drags Obi-Wan from sleep, moaning in pain as the noise claws at his delicate senses. It can’t have been more than an hour or two since he passed out, meaning it’s still the middle of the night. There is no feasible reason for anyone to be demanding their attention at this hour.

“I’ll get it,” Satine huffs, climbing off the bed. “Ah, Miss Amidala,” he hears when she cracks the door open. “What a surprise.”

The mention of one of his soulmates, who has apparently tracked him down in the middle of the night, makes him go rigid. What the hell is she doing here?

“I need to talk to him.”

Obi-Wan can perfectly picture the scowl on Satine’s face when she says, “I’m afraid he’s not seeing visitors at the moment.”

“He’ll see me,” Padme snaps, brushing past her into the hotel room.

“How did you even find him?” The older woman asks as Amidala walks the short hallway between the door and the main room.

“He told Anakin what hotel he was staying in, then I bribed the cleaning staff for the room number of the sad man who drinks too much.” She gestures meaningfully to the room and to Kenobi, where he sits slouched on the bed. He managed to get himself upright, but he’s still got the blankets swaddled around him and knows he looks like he went three rounds with a bottle and lost. “Got it in one.”

“Resourceful,” Satine concedes.

“I’m going to run for Senate one day; I have to be.”

“You’ll have my vote when you do.”

“Thank you, Ms. Kryze.”

Satine looks between them before making an exit to her own room with a soft, “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Awkward silence falls between the pair, left alone all at one. For the first time since they met, they stand on even ground. Padme takes him in with a critical eye, and Obi-Wan thinks she looks a bit rough around the edges, too. Sweatpants and tee shirt replace her usual attire, and her hair is pulled messily back away from her face. It seems like her decision to come her was one made last-minute.

“How is he?” Obi-Wan asks, because he knows Anakin must have somehow overheard the conversation with Shmi in the alley. He heard them, he’d found out, and must have shared that information with Padme. Why else would she track him down in the middle of the night?

“A wreck, but then it looks like he isn’t the only one.” Obi-Wan flinches at the words. “Come on,” she sighs, “get up. You reek.”

Padme drags the blankets off him and helps him out of bed, allowing him to lean against her as they stumble into the bathroom together. His head is spinning, and he couldn’t walk a straight line if his life depended on it. She strips him down when his clumsy attempts at undressing himself fail, leaving him in his boxers and aiding him in clambering into the basin of the shower. Laying down towels around the outside of the tub, she doesn’t bother with the curtain when she turns the water on. Padme rolls up her sleeve and adjusts the shower head until the stream falls over where he’s seated.

“Men,” she mutters when Obi-Wan fails to do anything more than stare blankly into the middle distance, reaching over him and plucking the small bottle of complimentary shampoo from the shelf. “I dropped Anakin off at home before I came over,” Padme sighs, squeezing a dollop into her palm and lathering it into Obi-Wan’s hair. The sensation of her nails scratching against his scalp in combination with the hot water is blissful. “You’re not the only one Shmi is furious with at the moment. She thinks I should have brought Anakin home right away, instead of letting him stay for a while…”

“I should have just told him no when he asked about the coffee. It was stupid of me to agree,” Obi-Wan huffs.

“I’m as much at fault as you are. I encouraged him to approach you, and then I told Shmi that he was meeting with you. I didn’t know the trouble it would get all of us in.” She tilts his head back and rinses the soap from his hair. “Anakin really feels terrible, you know. He blames himself for what happened with your career.”

“I stand by what I told him at the café,” Obi-Wan replies, smothering a moan when Padme begins scrubbing him down with a washcloth to rinse away the lingering alcohol smell. “I don’t blame Anakin for what happened. Maybe when I was younger, and the pain was still fresh, but not anymore. He was just a child; he couldn’t have possibly understood the consequences of his actions.”

“You should tell him that. It would mean a lot to hear it coming from you.”

Obi-Wan snorts in derision. “As if I could get within earshot of him without his mother having me arrested on the spot.”

Padme grimaces, and apparently has nothing to say to that. Her scrubbing has washed away the red from their skin, but Anakin’s black marks and her blue remain. Obi-Wan hadn’t noticed before, but they’ve changed since that afternoon. Anakin has wiped his usual scribbles clean, and in their place has left what might be considered an apology. The words _I’m Sorry_ circle his right wrist, repeated all the way up to his elbow in a strange half-sleeve. He frowns at it and feels guilty; Anakin has nothing to apologize for.

“Come on,” Padme murmurs, finally turning the shower off and helping him out of the tub. He settles on the closed lid of the toilet and she wraps a towel around his shoulders much like she’d done with Anakin earlier. Obi-Wan’s hair is shorter than Anakin’s, so she’s content to let it air dry.

A toothbrush is shoved in Obi-Wan’s face, and he wearily accepts it. The mint flavor will be a pleasant change of pace from what he’s currently tasting, at least. After that, Padme disappears back into the main room, presumably to fetch him a clean pair of clothes. She reappears with them just as Obi-Wan’s hauling himself to his feet to spit into the sink, wearing one of his tee shirts. Her own had been soaked through in the process of cleaning him up.

Obi-Wan is left to change on his own, a difficult feat considering his sense of balance is still quite skewed, and he wobbles back into the main room to find her tucked into the spot Satine had previously occupied in the bed. She gestures to the space beside her, and he slowly makes his way across the room to collapse into the mattress. It takes a bit of manhandling on Padme’s part, but Obi-Wan somehow ends up with his head on her shoulder, one arm slung across her chest, and her fingers combing through his hair.

“We’re going to have a long talk about everything in the morning, when you’re sober,” Padme says in a voice that might count as stern if she didn’t sound completely exhausted.

Obi-Wan just nods, and lets himself drift back to sleep to the sound of her heartbeat.


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit of a time skip between Anakin's and Obi-Wans segments in this chapter. Just a couple weeks, but wanted to make sure you were aware.

Anakin is seated on his bed, cross-legged and hunched over a copy of Obi-Wan’s first book, when his mother finally slips into the room. He’d heard Shmi arguing with Padme, heard the front door slam when the latter finally made her exit, but hadn’t dared to venture downstairs and confront his mother just yet. The idea of having this conversation tonight, when he’s tired and confused and still so _angry_ , turns his stomach. Then again, if it were left up to him, they wouldn’t have this conversation at all. If it were up to Anakin, he would have left with Padme and gone to confront Obi-Wan wherever the man had slunk off to lick his wounds. Instead, he sets the book down in his lap and accepts a mug of hot coco from his mother when she offers it, shifting over on the bed to make room for her to settle. She has to be at least as exhausted as he is, after the day they’ve both had.

“Anakin,” Shmi begins, staring at the stained carpeting of his room, hands wrapped around her own mug, “I’m… not exactly sure where to start, here. I never really anticipated having to have this conversation with you.”

Funny, Anakin was never aware that this was a conversation that _could_ be had in the first place. A not-insignificant part of him is worried that if he opens his mouth and says what’s really on his mind, he won’t ever be able to stop. That he won’t ever be able to stem the flow of words expressing his confusion and his hurt and his disbelief that his own mother would keep something like this from him. He curls around the mug in his hands and allows his hair to fall into his face so that he doesn’t have to make eye contact. As much as he’d like to draw his knees to his chest, to make himself smaller, doing so would involve shifting the book from his lap—something he’s unwilling to do at the moment. Its gentle weight is a tether to his fragile reality, tying him to a truth he never even considered possible.

“I know you’re probably very upset with me right now, but I need you listen to my reasons for why I decided to do what I did before you tell me that you hate me forever, or whatever it is teenage boys say to their mothers when they’re angry, ok?”

Shmi is met again by silence, punctuated by the sound of Anakin softly slurping his drink. It’s bad manners and she knows he’s doing it on purpose, but she doesn’t correct him this time. A small part of him wishes she wasn’t being so reasonable with him right now, so that he has an excuse to yell at her. He won’t snap at her unless he’s provoked, which she’s going out of her way to not do.

“I need you to understand, Anakin, that I did what I thought was best for you. I know that seems like what I did was the opposite, but you have to look at it from my perspective. You were six years old when I found out that you had a soulmate. She was eleven, and she was lovely, and she was just as excited about being your soulmate as you were about being hers. So imagine my surprise when I get a call from the school board a few days later, asking me to come in for a private meeting regarding your soulmate.

“And then it turns out that you have not one, but _two_ soulmates, and that the second one just happens to be the twenty-two year old man who’d been teaching you for the last six months! It was very confusing for me. I knew that Obi-Wan hadn’t tried… anything… with you, mostly because you couldn’t keep a secret to save your life, but that didn’t make that situation any less scary for me. As your mother, it’s my job to protect you and make sure that you grow up to be everything that you are capable of being, and I wanted you to do it by yourself. Obi-Wan is a good man, but he’s fully grown. He’d lived his life, and he had an influence over you that I didn’t want to impact you as you grew into who you would become.”

“You still should have let me see him,” Anakin argues. “Obi-Wan wouldn’t… do that. He wouldn’t use me or manipulate me or whatever you thought. He’s not like that.”

“I couldn’t know that, Anakin,” Shmi responds. “I had to do what I had to protect you. How did—how did you even get in contact with him? Even I didn’t know where he’d run off to after the court case.”

“Padme found him, actually. She went to one of his book signings last year and something that happened there prompted her to look into him. She found out about what happened in Tattooine, and thought I should try and talk with him because I didn’t know why he just left one day. Like you said, I was six, and I’d been carrying around all this anger around because of it… I just wanted to talk to him. We met him at the release of his new movie this week and I invited him to coffee,” Anakin confesses. “We didn’t know about him being our soulmate until I heard you arguing with him in the alley this morning…”

“I’m sorry you had to find out like that, Ani,” Shmi sighs. “I should have talked to you before Kenobi and I got into it. I was just so surprised when Padme told me that you were out with him that I wasn’t thinking about how you felt about the whole situation…”

“It’s ok,” Anakin mumbles, because that’s what’s expected of him even if he isn’t feeling like everything is ok.

Shmi places a hand hesitantly on his shoulder. When he doesn’t flinch away from the contact, she squeezes it gently. “No it isn’t. I understand why you’re mad at me, and I know that one little apology isn’t going to fix everything. I kept secrets from you, and made someone you trust keep secrets from you. It’s going to take time for us to get past this. I just hope that you can at least understand why I did what I did, even if you don’t agree with that decision.”

As infuriating as it is to admit it, Anakin can understand why his mother chose to keep Obi-Wan away from him. She’s right though—that doesn’t make him like it. It doesn’t make him feel any less betrayed that Obi-Wan and Shmi kept something so important from him. Still, she is making an effort now to try and work with him. Talk about it with him. That’s something, he supposes.

“Do you think that maybe… now that I know... I could see him sometimes? Not alone obviously, you wouldn’t agree to that, but maybe if you came with us? Or Padme?”

“We’ll see,” Shmi says, and Anakin will take what he can get.

* * *

 

Obi-Wan sits on an uncomfortable plastic chair, rubbing anxiously at his bared arms. He feels like a live wire—a raw nerve. The last time he wore a tee shirt out in public was over ten years ago. In fact, the one he’s wearing (a black shirt reading _Straight Outta the Library_ in large white text) was purchased for him by Satine, who had deemed the ones he owns too raggedy for public viewing. Right now he desperately wants to scramble from the room, out of the building, and back to his car where Satine is waiting for this meeting to be over. He has a feeling that would end poorly for him, however, so instead he just shuffles miserably in his plastic chair. At least, he thinks as he looks around the room, he isn’t alone in his suffering.

Seated around him are a dozen other men and women who look just as miserable as he does. Some of them bare the marks of soulmates: scars where ink had once been. Others’ arms are free of color, never before marked by the writing of another. There are a few like him who still wear ink, likely also struggling with some aspect of their connection to their soulmate. Obi-Wan is among the likeminded here, but he still can’t find any semblance of peace. Among these people, he is a newcomer. He can feel their gazes weighing heavy on his shoulders as they try to puzzle him out. Who is he to sit among them? What has brought him here?

Today, the drawings on his arms are small: notes from Anakin and Padme about their schedule and words of encouragement for his meeting. Of all the things that had forced him out of the car and into the building, it had mostly been those gentle reminders of why he’s doing this. He wants a chance to be with Padme and Anakin, when they’re finally ready to take the next step in their lives. If it’s decided that Obi-Wan has to attend these meetings for the rest of his life, he’ll do it. At this point, he’ll do anything for that small glimmer of a chance.

A middle-aged woman settles down in the chair a few down in the circle from him. She carries herself in a way that screams of authority, and her forearms, are scarred with the marks of a lost soulmate. Her arrival seems to mark the start of the meeting, as the quiet murmuring happening between the members of the group familiar with one another trickles to a halt. Their eyes turn to her, and she smooths the wrinkles out of her dress as she stands.

“Hello again, everyone,” she says with a polite smile. “As most of you know, my name is Shaak Ti, and I lead this particular soulmate support group. We welcome all range of people, from those who have lost soulmates, those whose soulmates have rejected them, to those who have never discovered their own connection. Most of you are familiar, but I can’t help but notice that there is at least one new face among us,” She glances at Obi-Wan “Sir, would you like to tell us about yourself?” At Obi-Wan’s hesitation, she adds, “If you’re uncomfortable, you’re welcome to just watch until you’re ready to talk.”

“No!” He sputters. “No, it’s um, alright. I just haven’t been to one of these meetings before. Erm, hello, everyone. My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Obi-Wan waves awkwardly from his seat, and receives a murmured _Hello Obi-Wan_ in return. “I’m not actually from around here, just passing through, but I felt like—or rather, was told, I suppose—that I should attend this meeting tonight.”

“And what, specifically, are you struggling with, Obi-Wan, if you don’t mind sharing?” Shaak Ti asks.

Obi-Wan rubs his hands over his arms, a nervous tick he’d believed smothered at the beginning of his career as an author. Apparently it’s making a return now that he’s not allowed to bundle himself up in layers and layers of long-sleeved shirts. “When I was twenty-two, I wanted to be a teacher. This may sound like an odd thing to begin with, but I assure you that it is quite relevant. I was interning with a first grade class and, to my knowledge, did not have a soulmate.” This is the first time he’s shared his story with anyone other than Satine, and he’s surprised how easily the words flow. Obi-Wan had expected himself to stutter, and stumble, and make an absolute fool of himself in the process. It turns out he was wrong. The gift of a storyteller, he supposes. “It turned out that I was wrong, and beyond that, I had not one, but two soulmates. Their names are Padme and Anakin, and they’re both absolutely lovely people. They’re very supportive in me being here and discussing our issues, which happen to be that they’ve singlehandedly managed to ruin my life.”

Giving the group another weak smile, Obi-Wan tucks his hands between his knees and hunches a bit awkwardly over them. The group is paying attention, he knows. They make the appropriately surprised expressions when he speaks and the vacant stares he’d gotten at the beginning have long since vanished. “Padme and Anakin are eleven and sixteen years my junior, respectively. And if that wasn’t bad enough to discover at twenty-two years old,” Obi-Wan says with a bitter chuckle, “I also knew the then six year-old Anakin. He was a student in my class!

“As you can imagine, the parents and the school board were not particularly pleased with this development. Even though I hadn’t sought them out, hadn’t even known when I’d begun working there, I was still put under extensive scrutiny. My whole history laid out before a court of law because a six year-old boy took a pen to his skin. I was dismissed from my position at the school, expelled from my sponsoring university, and several of the parents of my students attempted to bring my up on varying abuse charges through the next few weeks. None of them stuck, Anakin’s mother was kind enough to testify in my favor, but it still destroyed what was left of my reputation.

“I was, essentially, run out of town. Anakin’s mother filed a restraining order against me so that I couldn’t seek him out and explain what had happened—why I’d left so suddenly—and I knew better than to try and find Padme, after everything that happened. So I carved out a life for myself far away from teaching and lawsuits and soulmates. I was… well, not _happy_ , but I was alive and successful at what I’d chosen to do. Whatever that makes you.

“And then about a year ago, I happened to run into Padme at an event we were both attending. She’s twenty-one now. Anakin is sixteen; we had coffee a few weeks ago just to talk about everything. And recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to know them. Which is why I’m here, I suppose. As much as I know that what happened wasn’t anyone’s fault, a small part of me still wants to blame Anakin and Padme. There’s still a lot that I need to work through, but I have time yet to figure it out. When I do, I want to be a part of their lives. I want to stop running from this.”

Shaak Ti gives him a soft, encouraging smile, “It’s very brave of you to share with us, Obi-Wan,” she says, and the man sitting to Obi-Wan’s left claps him on the shoulder. “We’re proud to start you off on your journey of growth. Would anyone else like to share tonight?”

He sits in their little circle and listens to people talk about their own soulmate-related problems. There is an unmarked woman whose partner left her when they found out they had a soulmate, a man whose parents won’t speak to him because they don’t approve of his soulmate, another whose partner died in an accident a few months ago. It is surprisingly soothing to know that he isn’t the only one who suffers from these problems. Even as an author of soulmate-related fiction, he’d always felt isolated—like he was the only one who struggled with problems pertaining to soulmates. These other troubled minds share their progress on their paths to overcoming their own struggles, and he finds himself hoping that he can be as strong as them one day.

The man who’d sat next to him in the circle catches up with him after the meeting at the refreshments table. He’s a little bit younger then Obi-Wan, he would guess, with well-defined cheekbones and a strong jaw peppered with stubble. His blonde hair is cropped close to his scalp in a military style, and he’s wearing a tee shirt bearing an Army logo. He hadn’t spoken during the meeting, but his posture and the ease he seemed to have about him made Obi-Wan think he was a regular.

“Hey,” he says, offering Obi-Wan a hand. “Glad you could make it to the meeting tonight. I’m Rex. It was Obi-Wan, right?”

“Yes,” Kenobi replies, shaking the man’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Rex.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes flicker down to the man’s arms without his permission, and finds them covered in scars. Not the traditional scars gained when a soulmate dies, carving the last of their art into your skin, but the kind gained in hard work and combat. When he looks back up, embarrassed, Rex is smiling kindly at him. “It wouldn’t offend me if you asked,” the man chuckles. “I’ve got a twin brother, Cody. We’re both military brats, come from a long line of war heroes, so when our time came we followed in dad’s footsteps. We’re familial soulmates. He’s on active duty right now, and I’m between tours. Drives me crazy when he’s out there and I’m stuck here, not able to protect him. It’s what I’m in for.”

“I’m sorry. That must be difficult for you.”

Rex shrugs, reaching past Obi-Wan to grab a cup and pour himself some coffee. “We all have our burdens. What you’re going through can’t be easy either. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. We don’t really do the whole sponsor thing officially here, but we try to make ourselves available to each other, should we need some support. So if you ever want to talk about something, or just get a drink to get your mind off things, let me know.”

He offers Obi-Wan a small slip of paper with his phone number and _Rex—SSG_ scratched on it, which Kenobi accepts with a weak smile. “Thank you, Rex. I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on the drinks, I have something of a problem that I’m currently addressing, but perhaps coffee?”

“Sounds great. Just gimme a call anytime.”

With that, Rex takes his leave. Obi-Wan pockets the number and leaves the meeting feeling distinctly more hopeful about his future.


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey hey! What's up everybody? I bet y'all thought this fic was dead.  
> Surprise!  
> It was.  
> I got some really discouraging comments on it, and kinda just wanted to throw it in a fire and never look at it again. However, we're here. I'm going to keep hammering at this thing, I guess. Slowly but surely.
> 
> This chapter contains mention of injury, and all the medical mumbo jumbo that goes with it. If that's not your thing, probably best to avoid this chapter.

It’d started out as a perfectly good day.

In the months following Obi-Wan’s encounter with Shmi Skywalker and the revelation of his identity to his soulmates, it seems like everything in his life has begun to change; all of their lives have begun to change, in one way or another. They are all trying to embrace it for the better—trying to embrace the future they could have together.

Obi-Wan cancels the rest of his press tour, his days spent either attending group meetings or working on his next book. He’d tried to keep going for a couple of weeks but found that leaving Coruscant, putting distance between himself and the reason he was trying to desperately to improve himself, brought his personal demons roaring back with a vengeance. Satine cites health reasons to the press for the tour’s sudden cancellation, and Obi-Wan retreats to a small apartment in the heart of downtown, nondescript and completely separate from his Hardeen alias. While he hasn’t had any problems with the press finding him yet, it’s only a matter of time. Still, he isn’t going to let that stop him from getting on with his life.

Anakin has secured a part-time job with a locally-owned grocery store, the owner a kindly older man named Plo Koon. Koon works around Anakin’s occasionally hectic schedule and pays the boy more than he’d earn flipping burgers somewhere, making the job excellent for the teen. He bikes back and forth every day, saving up for his first car with the wages he earns. Relations with his mother are still rocky, but they are much improved by her attempts to be friendlier with his soulmates. It’s a slow process, involving a lot of awkward, closely-supervised visitations, but they do seem to be finally getting somewhere. She’s recently ceded that she need not attend the weekly coffee meetings the triad organized in an effort to get to know one another better.

Padme continues to do well in school, her impressive grades launching her to the top of her class and opening up a variety of real opportunities. Already she is being approached by perspective offers of internship upon her graduation, politicians clamoring to be the one that gets to take credit for training such a bright young mind. Though her rigorous schedule sometimes prevents her from joining Obi-Wan and Anakin for coffee, she always makes time for them in her off hours. She and Anakin take long strolls though the city to people-watch or simply spend an evening in with the television and some take-out. With Obi-Wan, she shares a meal and conversation, often finding herself flipping through the latest pages of his newest manuscript. It’s been slow-going, but she proves to be an excellent sounding board to bounces his ideas off. It never goes beyond dinner and a chaste goodnight kiss, despite the occasionally palpable tension between them. Part of their agreement on moving forward had been waiting until Anakin is of age; he is a member of their triad, and they don’t want him to feel like he has to play catchup to the two of them. His youth is what got them into this mess in the first place. They don’t want him to feel pressured into anything he isn’t ready for.

Today had been one of those days where Padme hadn’t been able to join them, leaving Obi-Wan and Anakin alone with their coffee, laughing as Anakin recounts the latest antics of himself and his classmates. Dinner with Padme later had already been arranged, Obi-Wan going through a mental list of ingredients he’ll need to collect on the way back to his apartment as they step out of the café. While he’s no gourmet chef, he has been trying to learn how to do more than microwave a frozen dinner or order takeout. She’d also agreed to accompany him to meeting beforehand and introduce herself.

It had been such a promising day. It is, unfortunately, the undisputed way of things that Obi-Wan’s life can never be so simple.

Everything changes abruptly when they part ways, Anakin heading off to his job on his bike and Obi-Wan walking in the direction of his apartment. He hasn’t even gotten halfway down the block when he hears the commotion: the screech of brakes, the shrieks of bystanders, the sound of impact. Realistically, it could be nothing; traffic in Coruscant is notoriously bad. It wouldn’t be a day in the Coruscant streets without a fender bender or three, after all. However, something in the back of Obi-Wan’s mind tells him that this isn’t nothing. He turns, jogging in the direction of the commotion.

There’s a crowd forming on the edge of the sidewalk, milling around each other and muttering under their breath. Obi-Wan has to push and shove his way through them, feeling his heart pounding in his ribcage until he reaches the edge of the street. At that point, it stops for a few terrifying seconds, his muscles seizing in horror at the sight before him. It’s only when he’s elbowed by another passerby edging for a good look at the scene that his heart and his brain seem to kick back into gear. No one moves to aid the boy in the street—a textbook example of bystander apathy.

Instead, Obi-Wan alone stumbles out into the street when a sleek, black car peels off away from the scene. A hoarse shout for somebody to call an ambulance slips past his lips as he kneels on the bloody asphalt. Anakin is still, the boy’s bike a mangled mess of metal a few feet away, and Obi-Wan might have thought him dead if not for the shallow rise and fall of his chest. The fact that the boy is unconscious could be a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, Obi-Wan doesn’t even want to think about the amount of damage Anakin could have possibly sustained from the head injury that’s slowly oozing blood from his hairline and down his face. On the other hand, it might be better for him to remain unconscious so that he doesn’t have to suffer through the agony he would otherwise be in. Anakin’s right arm fared the worst in the impact, and Obi-Wan tries very hard not to look at the bone that protrudes from his flesh when he shucks off his overcoat and covers the limb with it, doing his best to staunch at least some of the bleeding. He’s not a medical professional, however, and can’t stifle the sob of relief when he hears the approaching siren and the squeal of breaks indicating the arrival of an ambulance.

The ambulance techs usher him into the vehicle along with Anakin, one of them shining a penlight in his eyes and sticking him with some kind of syringe when the world fades out around him and he can’t seem to catch his breath. His skin crawls with phantom sensation, and it registers somewhere in the back of his mind that this is a really bad time to be having a panic attack. That knowledge doesn’t stop it from happening.

Which is how he comes to be pacing the halls of Coruscant General Hospital, dressed in a set of cheap scrubs to replace his ruined clothing, an admittance tag itching around the skin of his wrist. The nurse told him to stay in his room, but anxiety claws at his chest and makes him jittery. Anakin is down in the surgical ward, a team of doctors and nurses attempting to put him back together. Police have already been around to talk to him about what happened; all there is to do now is wait.

Padme and Shmi are on their way, listed under Anakin’s emergency contacts in his medical file. It may be a while before they arrive, however. Padme was in class, in need of a lift from campus, and Shmi works on the other side of the city. Combined with Coruscant’s horrendous traffic, there is no telling just how fast she’ll be able to get across town. As Obi-Wan was already here, there was no need to call him. Until one of them arrives, he is alone.

In his hand, his phone pings, alerting him to a new text message. It can’t be Padme or Shmi; they wouldn’t have wasted time with a text. A glance at the screen reveals it to be from Rex.

 _U ok? Weren’t @ meeting_ , the message reads.

The meeting. He’d completely forgotten. _Emergency. Anakin in hospital_ , he sends back, after a fair bit of effort. Trembling fingers aren’t exactly conducive to the temperamental keyboard.

_Fuck, dude. Need me there?_

Obi-Wan chokes out a relieved breath at the offer. _Please_ , he returns, slumping down in a cheap, faux-leather chair outside a nurse’s station. A part of him still wants to pace, but the relief of knowing Rex is on his way, too, is enough to wipe what strength he had left from his limbs. He sets his phone in his lap and scrubs his hands over his face.

Cold, sterile air sits heavily in his lungs, raises goosebumps on his skin. The chair he’s sitting in might be comfortable in another situation, when he isn’t quite so on edge. Doctors and nurses stroll up and down the hall, attending to their patients and other small duties. He can hear them talking, like a humming in the background, but his world has taken on a distinctly muted quality. He desperately wants a drink, or a cigarette; the patch hidden by the sleeve of his shirt doesn’t quite seem to be cutting it right now. Rubbing sweaty palms on the fabric of his borrowed pants, he tries desperately to ignore the pitying stares of the nurses.

“Mister Kenobi?” Looking up, he sees that he’s been approached by a young doctor in a white lab coat. He can’t read the name on her identification tag, but she stands with the posture of someone important. The pile of paperwork on the clipboard under her arm lends further credence to that observation. “Are you Mister Kenobi? Here with Anakin Skywalker?”

Obi-Wan nods blearily. His skin is still crawling, but now that he’s sat down, he doesn’t think he could possibly get back up again. He does so nonetheless, hauling himself to his feet to meet this woman eye to eye. They’re around the same height, he absently notes.

“Can I ask what your relation is to Mister Skywalker? His mother identified you as a party authorized to make medical decisions in his records, but your relationship isn’t listen in the file. Are you his father?”

There is a long, awkward pause between them. Obi-Wan blinks, and blinks again, and finally the words she’s just said filter through his brain. “N-no,” he mumbles. “I’m his—um—”

 _Soulmate_ catches on his tongue for some reason. It shouldn’t be hard to say; he’s not a _shamed_ of Anakin and Padme. They are his world, his everything, but suddenly he isn’t standing in the cold, sterile hall of Coruscant General. Suddenly he’s twenty-two years old, on the stand and begging these people he’d once called friends to believe that he’d never do the things he’s been accused of. “I’m his—” Obi-Wan tries again, the word still sticking, and he can do nothing but flail his arms uselessly in a gesture that would have lost him any game of charades.

Fortunately, the doctor seems to understand. Her eyes flick between his face and the markings that cover his arms, and realization blooms across her face. “Oh,” she says quietly. Just that. Obi-Wan crosses his arms defensively over his chest as he waits for her to continue. “Well,” she finally says, “we have a few things we need to discuss about Mister Skywalker’s condition.”

They settle back into the uncomfortable chairs, the doctor laying a hand on his arm that is likely supposed to be soothing, but isn’t. “Well, the good news is that Anakin is stable,” she says. “We’re keeping him unconscious for now, but judging by our tests, he shouldn’t have suffered any lasting damage due to his head wound.”

Obi-Wan heaves a massive sigh of relief. “That—that’s good.”

“Yes it is,” she says, but the smile she flashes him is pitying. “However, there are some decisions that need to be made. As you know, his right arm fared the worst in the impact. He’s going to need to go back into surgery, and we have to decide what to do about the damage.

“We can’t guarantee he’ll ever have full use of the arm again, but we can always attempt a reconstruction. However, there’s a high risk of complications both on the table and during the rehabilitation process. It’s sustained a lot of damage.”

“And the other option?”

She grimaces, never a good sign. “Our surgeons recommend we remove the arm. I know it’s not a pleasant thought, and certainly not a decision you want to make, but our doctors think it’s the best course of action in regards to Mr. Skywalker’s health.”

Any earlier relief evaporates like mist, leaving him with an aching, gnawing feeling in his gut. Anxiety, hopelessness, fury. A hit-and-run. A fucking hit-and-run, and now Obi-Wan is here in the hospital, alone, being forced to make a decision that’s going to impact the remainder of Anakin’s life in a way he won’t ever be able to correct. “Is there any way that we can wait until his mother arrives? She’s on her way. She’ll know what to do better than I—”

“He’s lost a lot of blood already, Mister Kenobi.” The doctor says. “The longer we delay this decision, the higher the risk of complication when we get him back on the table.”

Obi-Wan drops his head back into his hands. “ _Fuck_ ,” he murmurs to himself. What more is there to say, really? He shouldn’t be the one making this decision. He only came back into Anakin’s life a few months ago. Shmi didn’t even trust him alone with the boy until recently. How could she have thought him capable of making these kinds of decisions? “ _Fuck_.”

The doctor clears her throat, impatient, and Obi-Wan forces himself to sit up. He takes the clipboard she offers him with trembling hands and signs his authorization in an ugly scrawl. At the moment, he can’t really do any better.

She stands, tucking the clipboard under her arm, and gives him another sympathetic look. “You really should go back to your room, Mr. Kenobi,” she says before she leaves.

Obi-Wan doesn’t get up from the chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise this is the last super angsty chapter. Nothing but good things for these kids from now on.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me through the long break. I really appreciate you. As always, you can always hit me up on my [ tumblr ](http://glare-gryphon.tumblr.com/) if you've got a question or just want to yell at me or whatever.  
> Until next time!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your kind comments on the last chapter. It meant a lot.  
> This one is a little short, but I promise the next one will be longer! Just wanted to post something.

In the end, a nurse with dark hair and dark kind eyes ushers him back to his room. It’s been rearranged in his absence, his bed pushed aside to make space for another and all its accompanying equipment. The new bed is empty now, but Obi-Wan guesses that they’ll be putting Anakin there once he’s finally out of surgery. Obi-Wan vaguely remembers reading something about proximity aiding in recovery times when doing research for one of his books.

For now, however, the nurse settles him down in his bed, checking his heartrate and the dilation of his eyes. They’re still concerned about his episode in the ambulance; they worry there made be more, if he doesn’t keep a level head. Apparently finding those satisfactory, she reaches out and holds one hand just above his right arm.

“May I?” she asks, waiting for Obi-Wan’s consenting nod before touching him, picking his arm up and running gentle fingers over the skin. Already the marks are beginning to scar, everything from his elbow down raised and red and ugly. He and Padme will carry these final marks that their third made for as long as they live—another physical reminder of the accident that can never be undone.

“Looks like you’re doing okay, and your arm is healing up nicely,” the nurse says, setting his arm back down. “We want to keep you overnight, though, just to be sure nothing happens.”

Obi-Wan briefly considers telling her that he and Anakin have a third soulmate, but ultimately decides against it. Padme can speak to them when she arrives if she likes; he isn’t going to make this situation any more stressful for her than it’s already going to be. “Has there been any news regarding Anakin’s surgery?”

“Not yet,” she says as she moves to wash her hands in the room’s sink. “I’ll let you know anything as soon as I know it.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and lays back in the bed as she leaves the room.

The television is on, but he isn’t listening to it. He isn’t listening to anything, really. Just…drifting. Obi-Wan isn’t sure how long, but he’s forced out of his haze by the sound of hurried footsteps. He only just manages to drag himself back to reality when Padme comes flying into the room, her eyes wide, hair and clothes dripping. It had starting raining sometime during his daze; he hadn’t noticed.

“Oh my god,” she breathes, taking him in, before sweeping over to the bed and wrapping him in a wet hug.

For all her usual eloquence, she seems to be as at a loss for words as he is, instead clinging tightly to Obi-Wan’s cheap scrubs. Heedless to her drenched clothing, he scoots over on the bed, dragging Padme up until she’s settled beside him. Obi-Wan may not have the words to comfort he, but he can offer her this small comfort. Just as Padme offered it to him after Shmi found him with Anakin in that coffee shop. It feels like years ago, now.

“Do you think he’ll be ok?” Padme finally asks, and Obi-Wan sighs.

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “But Anakin’s a fighter. If anybody can survive this, it’s him.”

* * *

 

The silence in the hospital cafeteria is oppressive, the room all but empty except for he and Shmi Skywalker. At this hour, there are no other visitors to bother them except those unlucky souls as they, who sit in shadowed corners and do not wish to be bothered. The only noise that breaks the quiet is the trickling of fresh coffee into the pot. Obi-Wan can feel the weight of Shmi’s eyes on him—had felt them the entire length of the journey from Anakin’s room to here. Blood rushes in his ears—a counterpoint to the rhythmic pattering of the coffee.

He’d been hoping, when he excused himself from the hospital room under the ruse of refreshing the coffees Rex had bought with him upon his arrival, for a moment of peace. A moment away from Shmi’s penetrating stare, which had been trying to avoid meeting since her own arrival. She’s been quick to offer to come along, however, and now hovers at his side, waiting for the right moment to begin the conversation that’s obviously been perched on the tip of her tongue as they waited for new on Anakin’s condition.

Whatever it is that she wants to discuss, he doesn’t think he’s ready. He’s not ready for this to end: the afternoons at the café and the evenings around his dining table. These things have only been his for a handful of months, a handful of months in over thirty years of life, yet Obi-Wan is certain that he cannot live without them. He denied himself the simple pleasures of knowing these people who are destined to stand at his side for so long; now that he’s spent time at theirs, he isn’t prepared to just let it all go.

So he pretends he doesn’t notice her scrutiny, shuffling around the countertop in an attempt to stay busy. Collecting cups and lids and packets of sugar. Maybe is he doesn’t allow Shmi the opportunity to speak, he’ll be able to drag these last, fleeting moments out just a few minutes longer. Maybe if he doesn’t give her the chance to turn him away, he’ll be able to spend just a few more precious minutes at their side.

“Obi-Wan,” Shmi says quietly, the gentle grip she takes on his elbow enough to still him in his tracks. Once Shmi starts this conversation, he doesn’t want to drag it out. He wants it over with quick, so he can flee to the nearest bar and probably drink himself to death. “I think we need to talk.”

Obi-Wan sets the coffee cup he’d been filling down, blankly watching its contents slosh around inside it. “I won’t make a scene,” he says, voice flat, blinking away the tears that threaten to fall. “If you just let me—just let me say goodbye. Just give me that, and I promise I’ll go and you won’t hear from me again.”

“What?” Shmi asks, clearly startled by his declaration. “Obi-Wan, that wasn’t… I wasn’t going to ask you to leave.”

Something like hope flutters in his chest, and he can’t keep it out of his voice when he asks, “You weren’t?” so quiet and fragile. Like he feels in this moment.

“No, dear.” The woman sighs. “I was going to say that these coming weeks, months, years—they’re going to be hard for everyone. Anakin, Padme, even me—we’re going to struggle. But you are so strong; much stronger than you believe yourself to be, I think. After everything that happened in Tatooine, you picked yourself back up and built a whole new life. We’re all going to struggle, but I wanted to say that I hope you’ll be there for us. We could use a solid foundation right now.”

Even more startling than her words is what follows: Shmi tugging on his arm until she manages to drag him into something resembling a very awkward hug.  

What little composure he’s managed to maintain shatters under the gesture, hot tears stinging at his eyes and leaving trails down his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, hands fisting at his sides. “Shmi, I’m so sorry.”

She’s quick to hush him, guiding his head to her shoulder the way he knows she used to do with Anakin when he was small. He hadn’t been happy about being left at school those first few days, Obi-Wan remembers. He and several other children had cried all through the first week, and maybe he should feel insulted that she’s treating him like a child. Instead, he just feels comforted, safe, for what seems like the first time in a long time.

“It’s ok, Obi-Wan,” she murmurs, rubbing soothing circles into his back. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

“If we hadn’t been there—if I hadn’t asked him to go out—”

He’s pushed away then, the woman taking his face in her hands and forcing him to meet her eyes. He must be a sight, flushed, puffy-cheeked and pink-eyed, but there is nothing but kindness in Shmi’s expression. “This wasn’t your fault,” Shmi asserts. “You can’t beat yourself up over this. I always knew there was a risk letting him take that bike to work; it could have happened any day, any time. I’m just glad that when it did, you were there to help him.”

This time, when she pulls him into a hug, he goes much more willingly. “I’m the one who owes you an apology,” she sighs. “I haven’t been fair to you. About anything, really.”

It’s not much of an apology, they still have a great deal more to discuss—a great deal of history to work through in time—but it feels like a step in the right direction.


End file.
